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ROYAL MILITARY ACADEMY, WOOLWICH, January 1869. PRINCE HENRY, surnamed the Navigator, was the originator of one of the greatest revolutions that has ever affected the destinies of mankind. At a remarkable crisis of human affairs he turned the attention of the civilised world to the ocean as the true link between nations, and directed towards it the immemorial traffic by land between Europe and the Asiatic continent. He first reduced navigation to a science, at least for any practical results; it was owing to him in a great measure that the mariner was enabled to abandon the coast and turn boldly towards the open sea he formed the school of the first seamen who braved the terrors of the untried Atlantic; but for him and the ideas which be diffused, Vasco de Gama, Magellan, and even Columbus might have never traversed the illimitable ocean. Nor should it be forgotten that this eminent man has other claims to general admiration. In the age of Henry the Fifth and of Talbot he was reckoned one of the most heroic of soldiers; he was a pattern of antique chivalry and faith; and, in circumstances when unscrupulous ambition might have placed a sceptre within his reach, he approved himself no ordinary statesman and a patriot of unsullied virtue. R. H. MAJOR.

A BASIN of water spilt on Mrs Masham's gown deprived the Duke of Marlborough of his command, and led to the inglorious peace of Utrecht. Louis XIV. was plunged into the most desolating wars because his minister was nettled at his finding fault with a window, and wished to give him another occupation. A single verse of Frederick II. of Prussia on the Abbé de Bernis, and a jest on Madame de Pompadour, led to the battle of Rosbach. A personal pique between Maria Antoinette and the Duke of Orleans precipitated the first expulsion of the Bourbons. Commodus, Domitian, and Caligula fell victims, not to their public tyranny, but to private vengeance. And an order to make Cromwell disembark from the ship in which he would have sailed to America, destroyed both king and commonwealth.

BYRON.

CIVIL SERVICE OF INDIA, 1859.

FRANCIS died at Rambouillet, on the last day of March, in the fifty-third year of his age, and the thirty-third of his reign. During twenty-eight years of that time an avowed rivalship subsisted between him and the emperor, which involved not only their own dominions, but the greater part of Europe, in wars, which were prosecuted with more violent animosity, and drawn out to a greater length, than had been known at any former period. Many circumstances contributed to this. Their animosity was founded in opposition of interest, heightened by personal emulation, and exasperated not only by mutual injuries, but by reciprocal insults. At the same time, whatever advantage one seemed to possess towards gaining the ascendant, was wonderfully balanced by some favourable circumstances peculiar to the other. The emperor's dominions were of greater extent; the French king's lay more compact Francis governed his kingdom with absolute power; that of Charles was limited, but he supplied the want of authority by address: the troops of the former were more impetuous and enterprising; those of the latter better disciplined, and more patient of fatigue. The talents and abilities of the two monarchs were as different as the advantages which they possessed, and contributed no less to prolong the contest between them. ROBERTSON.

OUR present repose is no more proof of inability to act, than the state of inertness and inactivity in which I have seen those mighty masses above your town is a proof that they are devoid of strength, and incapable of being fitted out for action. You well know, gentlemen, how soon one of those stupendous masses, none reposing on their shadows in perfect stillness-how soon, upon any call of patriotism or of necessity, it would assume the likeness of an animated thing, instinct with life and emotion-how soon it would ruffle as it were its swelling plumage-how quickly would it put forth all its beauty and its bravery, collect its scattered elements of strength, and awaken its dormant thunder. Such

officers who were the veterans of Egypt or Italy in their regiments; and when he passed them in review, stopped the men who had been previously designated to him, and said, “Ah! you are a veteran. How is your old father? I have seen you at Aboukir or the Pyramids. You have not a cross; here is one for you!" and threw the cordon round the astonished soldier's neck. ALISON.

THE words, "the French are coming," like a spell, quelled at once all murmurs about taxes and abuses, about William's ungracious manners and Portland's lucrative places, and raised a spirit as high and unconquerable as had prevailed, a hundred years before, in the ranks which Elizabeth reviewed at Tilbury. Had the army of Humières landed, it would assuredly have been withstood by almost every male capable of bearing arms. Not only the muskets and pikes, but the scythes and pitchforks would have been too few for the hundreds of thousands, who, forgetting all distinction of sect or faction, would have risen up like one man to defend the English soil. MACAULAY.

ROYAL MILITARY ACADEMY, WOOLWICH, July 1859.

I LIVE in a place where I have the pleasure of frequently hearing justice done to your dissertation, but never heard it mentioned in a company, where some one person or other did not express his doubts with regard to the authenticity of the poems which are its subject; and I often hear them totally rejected with disdain and indignation, as a palpable and most impudent forgery. This opinion has, indeed, become very prevalent among the men of letters in London; and I can foresee that in a few years the poems, if they continue to stand on their present footing, will be thrown aside, and will fall into final oblivion. The absurd pride and caprice of Macpherson himself, who scorns, as he pretends, to satisfy anybody that doubt his veracity, has tended much to confirm this general scepticism. DAVID HUME.

THERE are in every country morose beings, who are always prognosticating ruin. There was one of this stamp at Philadelphia. He was a man of fortune, declined in years, had an air of wisdom, and a great manner of speaking. His name was Samuel Mickle. I knew him not, but he stopped one day at my door, and asked me if I was the young man who had lately opened a new printing house? Upon my answering in the affirmative, he said that he was very sorry for me, as it was an expensive undertaking, and the money that had been laid out upon it would be lost; Philadelphia being a place falling into decay, its inhabitants having all, or nearly all of them, been obliged to call together their creditors; that he knew, from undoubted fact, the circumstances which might lead us to suppose the contrary, such as new buildings and the advanced price of rent, to be deceitful appearances, which in reality contributed to hasten the general ruin; and he gave me so long a detail of misfortunes actually existing, or which were soon to take place, that he left me almost in a state of despair. Had I known this man before I entered into trade, I should doubtless never have ventured. He continued, however, to live in this place of decay, and to declaim in the same style, refusing for many years to buy a house, because all was going to wreck; and in the end I had the satisfaction to see him pay five times as much for one as it would have cost him had he purchased it when he first began his lamentations.

BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.

At this time, when you are cut off from a little society, and made a citizen of the world at large, you should bend your talents, not to serve a party or a few, but all mankind. Your genius should mount above that mist in which its participation and neighbourhood with earth long involved it; to shine abroad, and to heaven, ought to be the business and the glory of your present situation. Remember it at such a time that the greatest lights of antiquity dazzled and blazed the most, in their retreat, in their exile, or in their death. But why do I talk of dazzling or blazing?

It was then that they did good, that they gave light, and that they became guides to mankind.

Those aims alone are worthy of spirits truly great, and each, therefore, I hope will be yours. Resentment, indeed, may remain, perhaps cannot quite be extinguished in the noblest minds; but revenge never will harbour there. . . . . Believe me, my lord, I look upon you as a spirit entered into another life, as one just upon the edge of immortality, where the passions and affections must be more exalted, and where you ought to despise all little views and all mean retrospects. Nothing is worth your looking back, and therefore look forward, and make, as you can, the world look after you. But take care that it be not with pity, but with esteem and admiration.

POPE.

ROYAL MILITARY ACADEMY, WOOLWICH, July 1860.

To Mr Moore.

LONDON, January 8, 1814.

As it would not be fair to press you into a dedication without previous notice, I send you two, and I will tell you why two. The first, Mr M., who sometimes takes upon him the critic, (and I hear it with astonishment,) says, may do you harm. God forbid! This alone makes me listen to him. pronounce, and don't be offended with either. The first, says Mr Moore, was, of course, the one that I preferred. The other ran as follows:

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Pray, perpend,

My dear Moore,-I had written to you a long letter of dedication, which I suppress, because, though it contained something relating to you which every one had been glad to hear, yet there was too much about politics, and poesy, and all things whatsoever, ending with that topic, on which men are fluent, and none very amusing—one's self.

It might have been re-written, but to what purpose? My praise could add nothing to your well-earned and firmly-estab

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